Functional Diagnosis in Upper and Lower Gastrointestinal Diseases: Relevance for Conservative, Interdisciplinary and Surgical Therapies

Abstract

guidelines for the management of patients with cardiac chest pain (CCP), a structured workup after exclusion of CCP is still missing. Frieling [1] suggests a diagnostic algorithm for the diagnosis of NCCP from a gastroenterologist's point of view. Gastroenterological expertise is required because in 50-60% of cases GERD, in 15-18% hypercontractile esophageal motility disorders, and in 32-35% other esophageal alterations may be detected as the cause of chest pain.GERD is one of the most common diseases worldwide with up to 20% suffering from weekly symptoms. Recently, an international group of experts (International Working Group for Disorders of Gastrointestinal Motility and Function) updated the Porto consensus and established recommendations on the indication and interpretation of esophageal function testing for the evaluation of GERD in clinical practice. This new consensus opinion is reviewed by Kandulski et al. [2] and Keller [3].